Gravity

How this film uses it

The film opens with a 13-minute unbroken shot. It shows you all of orbital space as one continuous place. The camera drifts between characters and through the shuttle, and it floats with the same weightlessness it is showing you.

Where to see it

The opening shot. It begins with Earth seen from a distance, drifts to the shuttle, passes through the crew and then watches the debris strike. The whole premise of the film is in that single take.

How this film uses it

After Kowalski disappears, the film stays almost entirely with Ryan Stone's point of view and the resources she has. You know exactly what she knows and no more. Each problem feels as impossible to you as it does to her.

Where to see it

Stone alone in the Soyuz capsule, calculating her oxygen supply. The camera stays close on her face and the math is visible, so you do the arithmetic alongside her.

How this film uses it

Space is a vacuum, and Cuarón and sound designer Glenn Freemantle build the film's sound around that. Impacts outside are silent, while sounds from inside are turned up. The result feels claustrophobic and vast at once.

Where to see it

The debris strike. What you see is a catastrophe, but in space it is silent. Missing the sound you expect makes the destruction more terrifying.

How this film uses it

Emmanuel Lubezki's photography keeps framing Stone as a tiny figure against the endless black of space or the curve of Earth. At that scale, you can see the universe doesn't care whether she lives. Her survival comes across as an act of defiance.

Where to see it

Stone tumbling away from the shuttle after the debris strike. She is one figure in a white suit against all of space, with the Earth a blue curve below. The scale is fairly dizzying.